Nico Peterson's Napier Street residence is a secluded West Hollywood house whose apparent emptiness becomes part of the mystery surrounding Peterson's disappearance. Philip Marlowe first finds it closed and quiet, then returns to investigate through the back entrance; on that later visit, the house becomes the setting for a sudden armed intrusion.

Setting and Description

Clare Cavendish gives Marlowe the address as a place off Bay City Boulevard, warning that Napier Street is easy to miss and explaining that Nico Peterson prefers secluded spots. The house itself suits that preference: set along a road rising toward distant, hazy hills, it resembles a Japanese teahouse as Marlowe imagines one. It is a single-story structure of dark red pine, with a wraparound porch and a shingled roof that rises in four shallow slopes to a central point topped by a weather vane. Narrow windows and drawn shades further screen it from view.

The details of the approach make the house feel removed from ordinary street life. Marlowe climbs three wooden steps to the porch, where the sun-warmed walls smell of creosote. When he presses the bell, it does not ring inside; knocking produces no answer either. Looking through the glass panel and lace curtain, he can make out only an ordinary living room and its ordinary furnishings.

First Visit: Signs of Absence

Although newspapers have stopped piling up, the house gives Marlowe the impression that nobody has lived there for some time. Its quiet seems to swallow sound, reinforcing the sense of an emptied place rather than a home awaiting its occupant. A voice from behind Marlowe confirms that Peterson is not there, but the house itself offers no explanation for his absence.

The residence's concealed location and closed appearance echo Clare's account of Peterson's taste for privacy. Yet its stillness is not proof of what happened to him: it is an ambiguous clue, consistent with a man who values seclusion but also suggestive of a life interrupted or deliberately hidden.

Return and Back-Entrance Investigation

After rain, Marlowe returns to Napier Street on foot. He parks at the start of the street rather than drive up to the house, hoping to avoid the elderly neighbor across the way, whom he suspects would recognize his Oldsmobile. The neighbor's shack is shut, and Marlowe sees no one outside. Instead of approaching the front door again, he circles to the rear across wet grass.

The back yard looks neglected. Overgrown acacia bushes and a yellow-flowered creeper have run riot, while the windows are dusty. A tabby cat sleeping beside the door briefly opens one eye, then rises and pads away. The scene adds visible signs of disuse to the impression formed on Marlowe's first visit, but he does not turn back: the locked door can be opened with a small lock-picking implement he kept from his days in the district attorney's office.

Violence Inside the House

The house's apparent vacancy gives way to a more immediate danger when Marlowe is inside speaking with Lynn Peterson. A car pulls up out front, but he barely registers it. Before he can decide whether to tell Lynn that Clare reported seeing Nico in San Francisco, the back door opens and two Mexican men enter. One carries a gun; the second appears not to need one. Marlowe later calls them Gómez and López for convenience, having never learned their names.

The intrusion transforms the residence from a private refuge—or the shell of one—into a vulnerable point in the investigation. Its back entrance, which allowed Marlowe to slip in unseen, also admits the men who confront him and Lynn. The sequence places the house's seclusion in double perspective: it keeps the street at a distance, but it cannot keep the violence surrounding Peterson's disappearance out.